Matthew
17:14-23
September
10, 2017
William G. Carter
When they came to the crowd, a man came to Jesus, knelt before
him, and said, ‘Lord, have mercy on my son, for he is an epileptic and he
suffers terribly; he often falls into the fire and often into the
water. And I brought him to your disciples, but they could not cure
him.’ Jesus answered, ‘You faithless and perverse generation, how much
longer must I be with you? How much longer must I put up with you? Bring him
here to me.’ And Jesus rebuked the demon, and it came out of
him, and the boy was cured instantly. Then the disciples came to Jesus privately and said, ‘Why could
we not cast it out?’ He said to them, ‘Because of your little faith. For
truly I tell you, if you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you will
say to this mountain, “Move from here to there”, and it will move; and nothing
will be impossible for you.’
As they were gathering in Galilee, Jesus said to
them, ‘The Son of Man is going to be betrayed into human hands, and they
will kill him, and on the third day he will be raised.’ And they were greatly
distressed.
The TV preacher looked at the
weather map and was not the least bit discouraged. Then he looked back at the
camera and said, “If we pray hard enough, God will send the hurricane out to
sea and it will never touch us. We just have to have enough faith.”
Tell me friends, do you have that
kind of faith?
There's another preacher down in
Houston who has been quite successful at telling people to have more faith. “If
you have faith,” he says, “God will make you successful too.” That’s his
message. Then he extends his arms toward an arena that seats 16,000 people, all
of them hungry for riches, success, happy children, and recordings and books of
his sermons which are conveniently available in the church’s bookstore.
As one of my teachers used to say, “Every
preacher has only one sermon that they keep preaching over and over again. They
may use different Bible texts but there's only one sermon that they speak.” You
think that's true? It's true for the preacher down in Houston. “If only you
have enough faith, God will enrich your life and make it better.”
But maybe you saw the news as I did.
When the first big whopping hurricane hit Houston, that success preacher was
slow to respond in reaching out to people who were homeless or flooded. And
then he kept changing his story to avoid the awkwardness what he has said
repeatedly over the years, that if you have enough faith, God will make your
life turn out well.
So this was on my mind as I worked
with the Bible text from today. A father is concerned about his son. The boy
has a severe case of epilepsy and it is harming his life. Now, that’s a first
century family. They didn’t know what to do. They heard about Jesus, but for
some reason they didn’t go directly to him. They went to his disciples – and the
disciples could not cure him.
But then Jesus comes to town, so the
father rushes toward, falls to his knees, and spills out the whole story. Jesus
responds in a grumpy way: “How much longer must I put up with you people?” Take
note. We don’t know if he’s talking about the man, his family, the townspeople,
the world at large, or just the disciples. He doesn’t specify.
Yet this is the Jesus of Matthew’s
Gospel, the One with great authority and power, the One who heals “everybody.”
So he calls the boy toward, casts out the illness (which is personified as a
hostile force), and the boy is healed instantly. End of story.
Well, not so fast. The disciples
pull aside their Lord to ask, “How come we can’t do that?” And the episode
becomes a teaching session about faith. “You don’t have enough faith,” he says.
“In fact, if you had faith that size of that little, bitty mustard seed that I
keep talking about, you could move mountains.”
Now, as you know, that’s the verse,
the single verse, that all the smiling TV preachers latch onto. And it’s true.
Jesus said it. It’s in the book. There are other verses in the book that sound
like this one. Gives the impression that anybody with enough faith can pray
away a storm, or at least have their best life now!
Just one thing to remember: there
are other verses in the book too. In fact, in the very next verse, we hear
Jesus saying he is going to the cross.
Do you hear the paradox of that? The
man who can heal everybody is going to be betrayed, condemned, and killed. The
Lord with great power and complete authority will be crucified. The One who
chastises his own dear ones for not having enough faith is going to suffer on
the cross. How do we hold that together?
It’s difficult, especially if you
subscribe to those people who insist that faith makes you successful.
Years ago, Robert Schuller, bless
his heart, spoke at the chapel of Princeton Seminary. The room was packed to
hear that cheerful can-do preacher speak about his beliefs. After he spoke, there
was a question-and-answer period. One of the theology professors raised his
hand, and Dr. Schuller called upon him. “Tell us, Dr. Schuller, what you
believe about the crucifixion.” Without blinking, the cheerful preacher said, “Like
every successful person, Jesus had his share of setbacks.”
Across the chapel, there was a
unanimous groan. If we read the Gospel of Matthew, the cross is more than a
setback. The crucifixion of the Son of God is a rejection of God himself. It is
a defiant response to a man who taught us to love one another, and then showed
that love as he healed kids with epilepsy, fed the multitudes, and forgave the
sinners. To put him on the cross is to declare, that regardless of whether or
not we think he’s a good man, we don’t want him.
And it’s even more than that. Jesus
knows the cross is the inevitable outcome of loving God in a world like this.
Yet he goes willingly and does not waver. Do you know why that is? Because when
he goes to the cross, it is a matter of faith – his faith. He trusts in
God so completely he will risk his life to do the will of God.
Imagine what kind of faith you must
have to risk your life. Imagine what kind of faith you must have to bear the
sins of the world upon your shoulder. Imagine what kind of faith you must have to
face destruction, indifference, cruelty, and total darkness. As the early
church would say, “The world is saved through the faith of Jesus.”[1]
So the first thing the Bible story reminds
us that we are not free to pick a favorite verse out of the text and isolate it
from what's around it. Faith like a mustard seed that moves mountains and going
to the cross are connected in Matthew’s mind. And looking to Jesus, I think we
will see the connection. Faith is about being faithful. It’s not primarily
about success; it’s about doing the right thing.
It’s the faithfulness of Jesus that
saves the world from its brokenness. It’s his faithfulness that begins the world’s
redemption. And it takes a good measure of maturity to be able to see that.
My friend Terry Chapman was in town
last week. He's a pastor in New Jersey and has done some mission work in Africa.
A few years ago, he visited a church where the sermon was titled, “Get God – Get
Gold.” The African preacher was wearing
a white three-piece suit, and strutting around the stage to show off a big gold
Rolex watch. “I got this,” he said, “because I got God. Why don’t you prove to
me how much you want God?” With that,
the ushers came around with the offering buckets. People climbed over one
another to fill them with everything they had.
You know, it’s almost enough to make
you want to get your own show biz church. Almost.
Terry said, “It seems the more
people suffer through tragedy or economic and political injustice, the more
vulnerable they become to this thin veneer of illusory good news covering over
a vast amount of fear and greed.”
So what do you think God wants from
us? More faith, so we can improve our circumstances? Or more faithfulness to
become more like Jesus?
As scholars reflect on the Gospel of
Matthew, they see more than a biography about Jesus. They see the invitation to
become his disciple. To study him. To imitate him. To do what he says,
particularly when we see him doing it himself.
It starts as early as the Sermon on
the Mount. “Love your enemies and do good to those who persecute you,” says the
One who shows us what that looks like. Matthew’s Gospel is a manual of discipleship,
a textbook for true faithfulness. Feed the multitude, give a cup of fresh water
to the thirsty, heal the sick, visit the castaway, love those considered
disposable, pay attention to the littlest ones, give money to the needy, and
pray at all times. That’s faith – faith-full.
And we all need more of it, because
the life of faithfulness is an invitation to bring every aspect of our lives
under the obedience of a sovereign God. It matters to whom we bind our hearts,
how we spent our money, and how we treat our parents. It matters that we belong
to God before we bow down to the Emperor du jour.
Even in this Gospel of Matthew,
which normally treats the disciples of Jesus with kid gloves, here we're reminded
that the disciples were far from ever being complete. As good as they were,
they did not have their act together sufficiently to heal as Jesus healed. What
they needed was faith, more faith, more little-bitty-mustard-seed faith -- which
I take to mean faithfulness.
In the long run, life doesn’t depend
on how good we are, because we alone will never be quite good enough. Life
depends on how good Christ is, how faithful he is in doing God’s mission to the
world. And if he is that good and that faithful, we can trust him and live like
him.
And that's what a church is all
about. We invite people to follow Jesus. We can’t promise riches which rust, or
big fat houses that are built on sand. But we can lovingly nudge one another to
more faithfulness, more dedication, more commitment, more justice, and more love.
That’s deep, soulful living, the life that really is life.
And there's a good word here, as we
begin our fall program together. Whether it’s worship, whether it’s service,
whether it’s singing, or especially if it’s Christian education, at the heart
it’s the invitation to live the life of Christ. So let me encourage you to be
part of what we’re trying to do here.
On Wednesday evenings around here, it’s
discipleship night. We’ve had a great group of people coming to classes and
choirs, and there is plenty of room for more. Our goal is to move from being
observers to participants, to move from being like the disciples in our text
who feel inadequate to serving God with dedication and joy.
That’s our continuing invitation, to
help us all move from the prevailing whims of our culture to the God-centered
life of service and praise. It is a journey to become faithful like Jesus.
(c) William G. Carter. All rights reserved.
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